Die for You

by Amy Fellner Dominy

  The deferral. For the past few minutes, my stomach felt like an actual stomach and not a blender. But now…I sigh. Jace looks at me, his eyebrows raised enough for me to sense his own tension over this.

  “Um.” I swallow. “Not right now.”

  “All right, then,” she says. “I’ll look forward to getting the completed application by next Monday.”

  Something shifts at the door—a flash of something. A shadow. I catch it out of the corner of my eye but when I turn to look, no one is there. “Did you see something?”

  Jace leans forward, angling his head toward the door, then shrugs. “No.”

  My shoulders are stiff, my hand gripping tight to my backpack when we walk out. I pause in the hall and take in a breath through my nose.

  “What?” Jace asks.

  “Nothing,” I say. But it smells like Dillon’s body spray out here. Except, it can’t be—he never gets to school early.

  “I’d better get to my locker,” I say, giving Jace a wave as I walk off.

  It can’t be.

  But I know that it is.

  “He’s trying to kill it.”

  Hannah leans forward, her fingers gripped around the bleachers just as tightly as mine. Dillon is up to bat but instead of his usual calm control, the bat is vibrating in his hand as if he wants to club someone in the head with it.

  Today’s game is away, against the Central High Lions. If we win, we’ll clinch a spot in the play-offs, which start at the beginning of May. Hannah and I are on the top row of the bleachers as usual. Dillon’s mom is on the bottom, and the other families are spread between us, most with little coolers and umbrellas against the heat that’s steadily been climbing since last week. Dillon struck out his first time up, swinging out of his shoes on three straight pitches. And it looks like he’s doing it again.

  “It’s all right, Dillon!” Hannah calls.

  I almost laugh. As if anything is all right.

  Dillon takes a huge cut at the ball. “Strike two,” the umpire cries. The other team bangs on the fence around their dugout, trying to rattle him. Normally, Dillon doesn’t rattle. Normally, Dillon doesn’t drip hot wax on his arm or sneak into my room at night with a pair of scissors.

  “What’s got him so wound up?” Hannah mutters.

  I shrug, but I know it’s all the same things that have me so wound up. I met up with him at my locker after I left Mrs. Lyght’s room. He was already on edge—tapping an angry beat with his fingers on the locker next to mine. “You got my present?” he asked.

  Present? “Yeah.” I busied myself by straightening books and notebooks on the narrow shelf. I could hardly look at him. He’d crept into my bedroom. Cut my hair while I slept. I felt…violated…no matter how he meant it. “We need to talk.”

  “Yeah,” he mimicked. “We do.”

  Crack. His bat makes contact, but it’s a slow ball chopped short to the first baseman, who runs for it, scoops it into his glove, and then plants himself in Dillon’s path to make the tag. It’s a routine out—I’ve seen it a million times. Dillon will jog into the tag, and without breaking stride he’ll turn around and head to the dugout. That’s baseball.

  But now, his shoulders and head are forward and instead of slowing, he’s running even harder down the baseline. The first baseman steadies himself and—

  I close my eyes as they crash. Even up here, I hear the thud of bodies and the cries.

  My eyes flash open. The Lions player is on the grass, curled in a ball. His hands are over his face and someone yells, “He’s bleeding!”

  Oh God. Dillon is also on the grass but he’s sitting. He pulls off his batting helmet and stands. A trainer from the Lions’ bench is already racing out and the two umpires are trying to hold back the Lions’ coach. Mr. Diaz is in the mix and then the shouting starts. Dillon is in the middle of it, in the face of the Lions’ coach.

  “Dillon, no!” I call out. Which is pointless because he can’t hear me with all the commotion. From the look on his face, I don’t think he hears anything.

  “What is he doing?” Hannah cries. “He’ll get thrown out.”

  My heart is in my throat. From the corner of my eye, I see someone run out of our dugout. Jace! Thank God—he’ll know what to do. Jace pushes his way in and gets a hand on Dillon’s arm. Already he’s turned Dillon away from the ref. I see him nod, imagine him talking in his easy voice. “It’s okay. Let it go.”

  Dillon smacks his arm away.

  Hannah gasps. Or maybe I do.

  He shoves Jace in the chest. Shoves him so hard, so unexpectedly, Jace goes down in the dirt. With a cry I can hear, Dillon falls on him, arms windmilling as he throws punches. Punches!

  I’m on my feet, horror and disbelief buzzing in my head like a swarm of killer bees.

  Two of our players, Ty and Jordan, pull Dillon off. Coach Diaz is next to them. They circle Dillon while Jace gets up. He wipes at his mouth and looks at his hand. I see the same shock on his face that I feel.

  “Where’s the trainer?” someone yells.

  It’s all over a few minutes later but my heart is still pounding. I sink to the bench. It’s too much. I can’t deal with this.

  Coach has walked Dillon back into the dugout where I can’t see him. Jace has disappeared in there, too, along with the other guys. Mrs. Hobbs is off the bleachers but standing still as a statue behind the fence. It’s obvious she doesn’t know what to do, either. Someone comes up the dugout steps and I start to stand, but it’s just Jordan, our next guy up to bat. They’re going to continue playing? As if nothing happened? A guy runs out from the Lions—someone new to play first base.

  “You should go down there,” Hannah says.

  “And do what?” I look at her. “They won’t let me in.”

  “At least see how Dillon is.”

  “What about Jace? Don’t you want to know how he is?”

  She flushes. “Of course. But whatever’s wrong with Jace will heal. With Dillon, I’m not so sure.”

  I swallow hard. My head is shaking as if I have no control over it. As if I’m a puppet and the string has been cut.

  The Red String.

  This has to stop. Tonight.

  Dillon’s truck is parked in the back of Chapel House, a small building next to the park that’s rented out for school banquets, weddings, and things like that. It’s painted white and has a pitched roof and arched windows, which is how it got its name. Tonight it’s closed up. Security lights paint shadows across the striped lot, empty except for the truck. It’s just past eight o’clock but it feels later than that.

  It’s a clear night. The moon is pumpkin orange and nearly full as I park beside Dillon. Even with eyes achy and red from crying, there’s plenty of light to see the dark shape of him sitting in the truck bed. I try for a full breath as I open my car door. I can’t even remember the last time I breathed easy. When I sat on the hill with Jace?

  I shudder a little. Jace’s bottom lip is split and swollen. His cheek is scraped raw just below his left eye. For the past few hours I’ve been at his house. It’s the only place where I knew I’d feel a little less lost. Dillon left the game with his mother, who spared one second to tell me, “He’ll call you later.”

  So I sat with Jace on his front step while he pressed a frozen bag of peas to his face. And, as generous as always, he’d tried to make me feel better.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. And, “Dillon will be okay.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “This?” he said, moving the bag off his cheek. “This is nothing. Dillon and I have done worse to each other just messing around.”

  “This wasn’t messing around.”

  The phone rang then, and I could hear his mom answer and bits of her half of the conversation. He’s fine…teenage phase. His father and I…

  Jace groaned. “They have everything figured out. Glad someone does.”

  After that, we sat there quietly as dusk crept in and swallowed up the day,
one shadow at a time. I knew both of us were trying to see into the future. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t see myself…anywhere. That was what frightened me most of all.

  That the present could wipe away the future.

  “I think I’m going to break up with him.”

  I heard Jace draw in a sharp breath and closed my eyes. “Emma—”

  “Don’t say anything,” I told him quickly. “I just needed to say the words. To see if I could.”

  He shifted beside me and I felt the tentative touch of his hand on my back. It was strange to fit myself against a different shoulder, awkward at first. But it was also Jace, the one person I knew I could lean against. We sat like that a long time, until the sky was an unbroken shadow and my phone finally beeped with a new text.

  Dillon.

  It was a relief. This couldn’t go on—I couldn’t go on. I’d never imagined that I could break up with him, but that’s what I had to do. He needed to deal with whatever was making him act like this. It wouldn’t be forever, I told myself. It would be more of a separation than a breakup. That’s how I’d say it.

  So here I am. Walking toward…what? I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know who I’ll find. Which Dillon…the one I love or the one who has begun to scare me?

  My heart races, my fingers fisted around my keys as I make my way over the cracked asphalt. I feel like I’m walking along a balance beam, nothing beneath me and no one to catch me. Like I need to be very careful. Bracing myself, I grab hold of the open tailgate and come around to where I can see him and he can see me.

  He’s sitting on a bed of blankets, his arms around his bent knees. His skin is sallow in the moonlight, but his eyes…it’s him. It’s the Dillon I fell in love with.

  He smiles sadly. “I want to be strong for you, but I’m not, Em.”

  I climb into the truck and settle down beside him. My fear is swallowed in a thick layer of sorrow. His hair is stuck to his forehead and I lean in to brush it back. I smell his breath then—the sweet hoppy scent of beer. There’s a small red cooler by his side and my stomach dips. Dillon doesn’t drink. I didn’t know he even had a way to get beer.

  “How is Jace?” he asks. He tilts his face to look at me. “You were with him, weren’t you?”

  “I stopped by to see how he was. He’s okay. He said it was nothing.”

  “He likes you, you know. He always has.”

  “Jace?” I shake my head. “He’s a friend, Dillon. He’s my friend because you’re his best friend.”

  “Am I?” He leans back and stretches his legs out in front of him. He’s in loose gray sweats and a Ridgeway tee. I’m still in my purple tee and jean shorts from today, along with a black sweater I found in the car. It’s zipped to my neck but the cold I feel comes from deep down inside.

  “Then why is he trying to break us up?” he asks.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw him with you at school this morning.”

  The lingering smell in the hallway. “It was you,” I say. “Why didn’t you come in if you were there? Or were you spying on me?”

  “I wanted to be there to support you. I knew it would be hard for you to ask for the deferral. I wanted to make it easier. But you didn’t ask, did you?”

  I flush with guilt. “It didn’t make sense to ask today. First I need to finish the application, and if I impress Dr. Abella, I’ll be able to make a request.”

  “I heard you talking about the assignment. Laughing. You and Jace.”

  “Is that why you jumped him today?”

  “I was fighting for you, Em.” His eyes flash up to meet mine. “I’ll always fight for you. Whatever it takes.” He reaches for another beer. There are new scrapes across his knuckles from today. Another reminder I don’t want.

  I shift away and something presses under my thigh. I reach down and from under a fold of the blanket I pull out something hard and flat. It’s a brown leather sheath—a carved wooden handle jutting above a silver snap. I’ve seen it before on the shelf in the guesthouse with Dillon’s dad’s things.

  I hold it up, the moonlight glinting off an edge of the sheathed blade. “Dillon,” I say with a dry mouth. “What are you doing with your dad’s knife?”

  “We didn’t do a lot of things together, my dad and I.” Dillon takes the knife and slides it out of the sheath. The metal glints almost blue in the moonlight. “He didn’t like sports the way I do. But he liked camping and fishing. We’d go once a year, just the two of us. He’d always bring this knife.” He turns it so I can see the serrated edge of the blade, the sharp, curved point. “He loved this knife. I think he was always more sorry to leave it than me.”

  “Oh, Dillon,” I murmur. “I’m sure he hated that he had to leave so often.”

  He shakes his head. “I think he was happy every time he walked out the front door.”

  The lump in my throat turns to ice. It’s not what he’s saying as much as the way he’s saying it. His voice dead and cold, like the knife in his hands.

  Dear God—the knife. Absently, he’s twisting the tip into the pad of his thumb.

  “Dillon,” I manage in a choked voice. “Give me the knife, okay?”

  “Maybe it’s me,” he says as if I haven’t spoken. He raises his left palm and stares at it. The knife circles the air in his right. “Maybe I’m not made to be loved.”

  “Your dad loved you, Dillon.”

  “He could have stayed at home. Could’ve taken a desk job at the paper. But strangers’ lives were always more interesting than mine.”

  I follow the movement of the knife. “Dillon.” I reach for it, but he shifts his hand out of reach.

  “What about your mom? You know your mom loves you. More than anything.”

  “I once had my palm read,” he says, continuing as though he doesn’t hear me. “Have you ever had your palm read?”

  I shake my head. My gaze flickers back to the knife.

  “My mom took me and Jace to the Renaissance Festival. We were in the fourth grade and we got it in our heads to dress up. Mom found us these shirts on eBay with padded shoulders meant to look like armor.”

  I nod and smile, forcing myself to stay calm, my eyes never leaving the knife.

  “Mom bought us plastic swords and we had fights on a grassy hill and ate turkey legs and roasted corn. Then, on our way out, we passed the market and a woman in a long red dress and black hair to her waist asked if the young master, meaning me, would like his fortune told.”

  “And you said yes?”

  “Jace thought she was weird, but I got Mom to pay and we all went into her open tent. She had a table covered in velvet and strands of crystals hanging everywhere. She told me to sit down and then to show her my left hand.” He holds it up and stretches his fingers wide. “She said she could read my future in the lines of my palm.”

  He looks at me, a half-smile on his face. “Like it’s already all here, written on our hands. Do you think it is, Emma?”

  “No, Dillon, I don’t.”

  Using the knife like a pointer, he draws a line in the air above the base of his wrist to the vee between his thumb and pointer finger. “She told me this was my life line. She said mine curves and that means I’m a strong person. Full of energy and enthusiasm.”

  “Dillon, put away—”

  “Then she wanted to tell me about my heart line.” He points with the knife again. “It’s this one at the top of your palm.”

  For a second, his lips tilt into a boyish smile. “I made a face and Jace busted up. My mom said that was enough, but I wanted to hear more. I didn’t care about heart stuff, but I wanted to ask about baseball. The woman laughed at me. ‘You’ll change your mind one day,’ ” she said. Dillon frowns at the memory. “I think about that sometimes.” His eyes shift back to my face and he studies me, the smile replaced by a look I can’t decipher. “I wonder now if she would have told me about you.”

  “She would have come up with something that sounded good
and meant nothing.”

  “You don’t believe in palmistry?”

  “As a way to tell our futures?” I shake my head.

  “But it’s old. You like old things.”

  “It was just a way for people to make sense of what they couldn’t control. There’s no truth to it, though. I mean, the Romans used to read the future in the chopped-up genitals of sheep.”

  I’m trying to be chatty, funny, anything to break his terrible mood, but instead it darkens. I silently curse myself for bringing up Rome.

  “Jace says I should let you go. He says you’ll hate me one day if I don’t.” His fingers squeeze around the handle of the knife. “Maybe you hate me now.”

  My muscles tighten as if I sense a shift of the ground beneath me. “Of course I don’t hate you.”

  “I looked it up.”

  I blink, confused. “What?”

  “The heart line.” He stretches out his fingers again, shifting his hand until he captures enough moonlight to see the dark creases of each line. “Some people have lines that go all the way from their pinkies to their pointer fingers. I’ll bet yours does, doesn’t it?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Mine cracks and trails off.”

  “It’s just a line.”

  “It’s shallow,” he says. “You can barely see it.” He runs the knife over the line again. “Maybe if my love line was deeper, you’d stay. You wouldn’t want to go to Rome.” He runs the knife over the line again; this time, a thin line of red trails from the edge of the knife. “Maybe my dad would’ve stuck around.”

  “Dillon!”

  “I know why you’re here and I don’t blame you.”

  Fear pulses through me with every speeding heartbeat. “I’m here so we can talk. So we can work things out.”

  “You want to break up with me. I’d do anything for you and it’s still not enough, is it? You still want to leave me.”

  “No—”

  “But if I can make my heart line deeper, if I can show you how deep my love goes—” He slides the tip of the knife up the line and then down. Blood wells up, coats the edge of the blade, gurgles sickeningly as he saws at his own skin, almost robotically.